Reclaiming the Smart City: Toward a New Right to the City

Abstract

This chapter explicates that the smart city is defined by a techno-utopian discourse, which presents smart technology as a value-neutral and rational tool in solving all kinds of urban problems. After analyzing several ethical issues relating to the smart city concept, Lefebvre's notion of the "right to the city" from the 1960s is examined. While the Lefebvrian "right to the city" is a utopian project, it offers an opportunity to reflect upon what an emancipatory and fair smart city should be like. We examine the current debate on the smart city by looking at three contemporary perspectives on the "right to the city." The chapter concludes by describing three trajectories that could lead to a more open, flexible, diverse, and participatory smart city, particularly in relation to issues of (a) participation, (b) communing, and (c) citizenship. These trajectories are illustrated by providing examples of different smart initiatives in the city of Barcelona.

Public participation in city building : case of the Arkhangelsk region

“…Speaking about city planning, it has always been a political issue. For example, many researchers sought the solution to the undemocratic, exclusive nature of city zoning (Trutnev 2003;Einstein 2019;Galič & Schuilenburg 2020;2023 Whittemore 2020; Khmelnitskaya & Ihalainen 2021). Henri Lefebvre, in his emancipatory concept of "the right to the city", advocated the possession of the citizens of the main role in all decisions concerning the city (Terentyev 2015).…”

“…The "right to the city" implies not only the right to participate but also the right to appropriate the urban space, that is, the availability of open spaces for citizens. Thus, Lefebvre's vision rooted in Marx's theory and articulated in 1960-ies, became an inspiration for the modern-day approach to urban design and, eventually, the concept of a smart city [Purcell 2014;Galič & Schuilenburg 2020].…”

Future-proofing the city: A human rights-based approach to governing algorithmic, biometric and smart city technologies

“…The second digital rights discourse connected to HRBA, digital rights in smart cities, is framed by Henry Lefevbre's (1968) concept of the right to the city. Applied in the context of smart cities, the right to the city and digital rights discourses represent a growing political movement that aims at countering the neoliberal and technocratic dynamics in city governance (Shaw & Graham, 2017;Morozov & Bria, 2018;Kitchin et al, 2019;Galič & Schuilenburg, 2020): "The right to the city is a rallying cry for transformative political mobilization to create such a humanizing urbanism, a more emancipatory and empowering city" (Kitchin et al, 2019, p. 16). Researchers point out that city infrastructure retrofitted with the smart city devices has become a new asset class (Morozov & Bria, 2018;Artyushina, 2023), and reversing the smart city paradigm would require the public ownership of digital and physical infrastructure (Green, 2019).…”

Data Co-Operatives through Data Sovereignty

“…In response to the research question of this article regarding how we can describe in parallel the potential emerging alternative around data co-operatives through data sovereignty, given that both technopolitical notions are intertwined and are explicitly presented as key principles of the new 'People-Centred Smart Cities' approach (coined by UN-Habitat to subvert the negative side effects on social exclusion, digital, and data divide stemming from the existing and highly hegemonic surveillance capitalism and sensory power), UN-Habitat acknowledges the following flaws on smart city implementations so far: (i) lack of awareness of longstanding smartness in cities; (ii) overreliance on the optimisation narrative; (iii) lack of evidence and key performance indicators (KPIs); (iv) failure to engage residents in a meaningful manner; (v) privatisation of public infrastructure and services; (v) lack of transparent and structured data governance [16,[90][91][92][93].…”